The present invention relates to a billing method for requesting contents or data in a network, the client or the customer who uses the client having a certificate for the billing method, the certificate containing verified data which identifies the customer and permits preparation of a bill or billing.
The specification of a billing method for Internet contents constitutes a great challenge. There is a huge demand, in particular, also in telecommunications companies. There exists, for example, the approach in which the existing modem or ISDN connection to the Internet service provider (e.g., T-Online) is disconnected upon calling up a WWW page which is subject to charge, and a new connection is established via a 0190 call number. This approach does not comply with Internet standards and potentially involves a whole host of problems in practice.
The most frequently used billing method in the Internet is billing via credit card. Here, however, the cost and possibilities of abuse are very high.
Today, for securing, that is, for the secure transmission of data in the case of client/server connections, there is a generally accepted standard, the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol, also referred to as Transport Layer Security (TLS). SSL is supported in all WWW browsers and WWW servers today. The slightly modified variant TLS was standardized by the IETF (IETF RFC 2246). SSL/TLS mandatorily supports the authentication of the server and, optionally, the authentication of the client.